


Brain Damage

by TypingBosmer



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hordak-centric (She-Ra), Life in the Horde (She-Ra), Mentions of Catra and Scorpia, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26991430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TypingBosmer/pseuds/TypingBosmer
Summary: Hordak has been having nightmares.
Relationships: Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Brain Damage

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I have not yet caught up with the entirety of She-Ra, so I do not really know the Clone Lore or anything like that. I have no idea how Prime has actually organized his clones' bodily functions, and whether they need to sleep at all. This is purely headcanon, down to Hordak sleeping in an empty clone tank. Please take this fic at face value, and try to enjoy the inner musings of the emotionally constipated emo space elf!

Once more, he dreams that he is back in the light. That the drab mess of swampy green and reddish brown - the colours of the Fright Zone, which he has been working so hard on but which remains imperfect - has been washed away. Replaced by the pristine white and the sharper, brighter, glowing green.

His sleeping mind even brings back the echoes of his brothers' voices, filling his head like they used to. Ever entwined, ever expanding into a flawless, orderly pattern, shaped by the loving hand of Prime.

He sees them all around him, identical figures in white robes - impeccable, not a crinkle out of place. Their eyes watch him, impassive, waiting for Prime to fill them with thought. And he hopes, with a nearly giddy breathlessness, that it is going to be a thought of acceptance. Approval. Pride, maybe? If he can dare expect it?

After all, he did it. He overcame his defects; he conquered a whole world, following in his exalted brother's footsteps. This has to count, right? This has to be enough?

It is enough, his dream tells him. You are enough. You are now allowed to embrace the light.

The thrill from this beautiful, beautiful promise rushes through him, in a wave of curious, alien warmth that he has not felt since the Etherian sunlight first touched his mangled skin. He is so caught up in his own elation that for a moment, he forgets how the dream is going to end.

But inevitably, he sees what he always sees next. The rows of his brothers part, revealing a new figure that stands out amid their even, beautifully unaltering rows.

This figure is much, much shorter, stockier even, than the long-limbed clones. Their face is a warm... human colour, and their - her - scalp is shaved clean where the wild, living pink ponytails used to be.

'The hair of the slave you brought from Etheria was touched by magic,' the clones say, in a rhythmic unison white pinpoints lighting up in their green eyes. A sign that they have been blessed with the words of Prime himself.

Suddenly, the presence of his family - the very family that he has been yearning to rejoin - is no longer soothing. Suddenly, he feels panic mangle his chest from within, lumping it under its weight like scrap metal.

'Magic is an abomination. An insult to the order of the Universe. It must be either controlled or purged. You should have seen to it yourself, but worry not. Your transgression is forgiven. Your slave has been cleansed. She can truly serve the Horde now. Even the smallest creatures have a place in Prime's grand plan. Especially a creature with such an aptitude for building weapons'.

'She is not - ' he tries to choke... But his chest is still caving in; his throat sprouts thorns on the inside and bleeds, flaking away into metallic rust. As if he had subjected himself to his own oxygen deprivation torture - and it worked on him. Because he is still defective. Still weak. Still malfunctioning.

He thrashes and claws at himself back in the physical space of his sanctum. Yet the pain refuses to go away. It builds and builds and builds. A whole spire of pain, massive at the base and razor-sharp at the tip. And when the little figure looks up at him with a pair of green, pure, empty eyes, the spire impales him - and he wakes up, screaming.

He usually sleeps upright, in an empty clone tank with a missing front side. To try and emulate the sensation of being put in stasis until Prime might need him. Another thing that was supposed to be soothing and yet clearly isn't. He is no less exhausted than when he climbed in, and it takes him a moment before he can break through the sluggish fog in his head.

With laboured breaths and muffled curses, he staggers out of the tank, snarling at no-one in particular when he hits his head on the tank's upper frame. Imp, who has been watching him for who knows how long, round little head cocked curiously to the side, seems to take it personally and barrels off in a flapping whirlwind of webbed wings.

He freezes for a moment, feeling vaguely guilty about frightening his child-clone - but does not linger. Jaw tense and shoulders squared, he marches in broad strides to see his... his lab partner.

He does not really have much concept of what time it is - it is surprising that time even functions on this backwater little planet, with hardly any other celestial bodies as a frame of reference - but Entrapta is already awake. Busily typing away on a key pad, a cheery little song of tap-tap-taps. Her face is lit up dramatically by several monitors of different colours, and she has stuck out the tip of her tongue in concentration.

She does not look away from her work when he approaches, but she does recognize his footsteps: her face lights up with a smile (a bright, excited, broad Entrapta smile that somehow fills him with profound relief) and she waves eagerly at him with one of her ponytails.

He clears his throat, again and again, but his voice still comes out cracking, filled with the same rust as in his dream. He wants to sound authoritative - he needs to, or else what good is he? - and instead, he nearly begs.

'Entrapta, I... I need you to enhance my armour further. Make it so I do not have to sleep'.

The tapping stops.

Her eyes meet his - deep and keen and their usual dark crimson. She inhales, and - knowing that she is bracing herself for a rapid-fire, excited explanation - he feels his lips inexplicably twitch in some barely familiar expression that is... the opposite of a snarl?

'Ooh, adding further neurological capacity to the armour, up to the point of regulating your brain waves and reshaping the circadian rhythm, would have been an amazingly complex project...' she says, gesturing emphatically with the large, fluffy pink hands she has shaped out of her hair.

'But I can't do that. I mean, technically I could - but I don't think I should. I know it's tempting to stay up all night when you are working on something big, and it's also bothersome to know that you might miss out on an exciting discovery when your eyes are shut... But I have collected enough data from personal experience - which maaay have involved brewing a lot of tiny mugs of coffee - to reaffirm that sleep is a vital part of any organic being's life cycle. And you are still organic at your core, so that definitely includes you'.

Still gesturing with her ponytails, she uses her actual hands to swipe vigorously at a few holographic images in front of her, and brings up a hovering graph of what looks like a humanoid creature's nervous system.

'The actual duration obviously varies by species, and I would need to run a few tests before making an assessment of yours - but prolonged lack of proper rest ultimately leads to memory loss, other types of brain damage, and at some point, death. I mean, a lot of things can lead to death, but this is about the least fun out of them. The payoff from getting rid of sleep is just not worth it'.

He sucks in a long, hissing draught of air, and digs his claws into her work desk. The rage that has begun to clench into a burning coil inside him is begging to be released. Swiping everything off to the floor with a deafening clamour would have helped - but he pushes the impulse down. He knows Entrapta does not like her workplace trashed.

'My payoff,' he spits, 'Would have been getting rid of yet another malfunction. Sleep does not bring me rest. It brings me...'

He curls his lips and nearly bites his tongue.

'I want it gone'.

Entrapta arches her eyebrows, her eyes enormous with concern. He stumbles back; this is not the first time she has looked at him like this, and he can never quite get used to it. Concern is an emotion directed at weaker beings, and he should be angered, shouldn't he, by this assumption that he is weak. He should be insulted. He should be driven to prove that she is wrong. That he does not need her concern.

But... But instead of all of this, here comes that sunlight warmth. Against all logic and reason. Could this be brain damage?

In a flash, Entrapta's whole countenance brightens again; he can almost see the sparkles surrounding her.

'If you are having trouble sleeping, you just need environmental enrichment! I will be right back!' she declares, before pulling herself up into the nearest vent, a small winged shadow zooming after her. Imp, probably.

He ponders the brain damage prospects for a while, surrounded by the blinking of the monitors and the lazily rotating holographic projections. Soulless without Entrapta's barrage of typing and excited commentary.

When she returns, she startles him by pushing a large, soft brownish-grey bundle out of the vent ahead of herself. He instinctively catches it in his arms and blinks in confusion. These look like... blankets? He thinks his soldiers wrap themselves into them when they sleep in the barracks? Not that he... strays often enough from his sanctum to observe the day-to-day life on those who serve him. That would be another sign of weakness... Wouldn't it?

Imp comes flying out next, mouth wide open to replay a snippet of conversation, in the eager voice of Force Captain Scorpia.

'Blankets? For science? Of course I can help! I'll get as many as I can! Rogelio has been hoarding them; he is cold-blooded, you know, so he needs extra layers when it's cold at night - but I am sure he won't mind sharing with a friend!'

And finally, out swings Entrapta, dangling from the vent on her own hair, utter glee all over her face.

That bizarre tic in the corners of his lips returns, even as he scowls at her confusion... Or tries to.

'We are gonna make you a blanket nest!' she informs him in a singsong tone, just about vibrating with joy. 'Ooh, this will be so much fun! Definitely more fun than a slow death from brain damage! I will also ask Emily to play back some soothing music! I have been building up a bit of a melodic database - for Scorpia to sing along to, because she loves singing, even if Catra tells her that it is annoying...'

She talks on and on, and the warmth envelops him so much that he begins to feel light-headed. That is, until the dread of brain damage settles in again, and tension tightens within him, and he hovers in awkward silence while Entrapta flits about, with her ponytails flying back and forth after her like a pair of pink lightning bolts, and with her faithful bot trotting after her with a lot of boisterous beeping.

She yanks the blankets out of his grasp at some point. Her fingers brush against his forearms and rest there, a fraction longer than they should, while she look up at him with a little smirk that he can scarcely bear without yet another bout of brain damage overcoming him.

Finally, she is done fussing about, and presents him with the fruit of her labours. A cocoon of blankets, laid out on the floor in a remote corner of his sanctum and padded with pink and purple pillows. The pillows must be from among Entrapta's belongings that Force Captain Catra's people brought in from Dryl... If the embroidered pictures of chubby little kittens and pug dogs are any indication (He has still not given his opinion on the footage of such kittens and dogs traipsing about, which Entrapta has in her files in abundance... But they were not too terrible).

'Ta-daa!' Entrapta cries, lifting herself up on her hair and wiggling her hands happily. 'Try sleeping in here! Emily, are you ready?'

The bot, never far behind Entrapta, blinks and bleeps in affirmation and patters closer to the cocoon. The sound that comes out of it... her, when she takes position, is, like the sunlight, unknown to him, but not unwelcome. Gentle, soft, like the babble of natural, sewage-free water... From a distant memory of how he walked other planets, wild and unkempt and smothered by all the... shrubbery, before the blinding light of Prime's order came flooding in.

The recollection stings him with an unexpected sadness, which he, again, writes off to brain damage. In a hurry to get this nuisance healed, he lowers himself onto the cushions and pulls the blankets up to his chin. Imp circles ahead, intrigued, before also settling down on the covers, curled up into a little warm ball. Absentmindedly, he pulls his hand from under the blankets and strokes Imp's back, drifting off on the stream of Emily's music.

His eyelids slip shut over his prickly, burning, tired eyes. The last thing he hears before falling into blackness is Entrapta's voice, calling him by the name he gave himself.

'Sleep well, Hordak!'

His lips move, touched by that persistent tic. Overtaken by exhaustion, he lets them spread out and part, in the opposite of a snarl.

In the blackness that wraps around him, like the biggest, softest of his blankets, to the sound of Emily's music, there are no white-robed figures. No watchful green eyes. Instead, he dreams of stars. Before he was cast out, he always viewed these scattered, chaotic specs as targets to be conquered in Prime's name - yet Entrapta gazed at their holographic likeness in hushed wonderment.

He sees her now, too, in his dream. She stands beside him under a starry sky - whole, this time. Her hair cascades down her back, the tips of her ponytails clutching at one another to mirror how she has clasped her hands on her chest. The shimmering stardust is reflected in her enormous pupils as she rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, beaming from ear to ear. Embracing the light.

It is different than the light created by Prime. So different that, in the deepest reaches of his dreaming mind, Hordak wishes that Prime would never come back.


End file.
